


Perchance

by musesofaninsomniac



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Fairy Tale Elements, Fluff and Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:21:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27171680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesofaninsomniac/pseuds/musesofaninsomniac
Summary: Geralt gets hit by a curse and until they find Yen, Jaskier has to make sure it won’t kill him. They both learn a few things along the way.  Alternatively, the Sleeping Beauty-Like AU where no one actually gets any nappy naps, because if 2020 won’t give me any rest no one gets any.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Kudos: 26





	Perchance

**Author's Note:**

> How to explain this fic…it’s ridiculous banter and sappy shit, where I also use Geralt as a proxy to complain about the fact that I can’t just fall unconscious until this hell year is over, contained in a shaky, Sleeping Beauty-adjacent structure where the “plot” is relevant a solid probably 5 percent of the time overall, and also it’s a metaphor for my current emotional state

On any other day, they probably wouldn’t have been in that situation in the first place. But on any other day, Geralt wouldn’t have just fought a pack of nekkers and wouldn’t be on a nasty comedown from the potions he’d taken, and Jaskier wouldn’t be nursing a bruised arm from where he’d hit a tree in his zeal to get too close to the fight before Geralt could haul him to safety.

But Destiny being the fickle bitch that she was, here they were.

“Well, this is a fucking disaster,” Jaskier says, inappropriately cheerful, from where he was huddled in the corner of the cell nearest to the bars, whistling to _Toss A Coin_ because he was, to his core, a prick. “Never a dull day with you, I suppose, is there?”

“I’m having Yen examine your head when we get out of here,” Geralt’s voice is flat. “Only someone deranged would be thinking of this as an adventure. And only someone _deranged_ wouldn’t have _run_ —” he said, more pointedly, shoulders straining as he pulled against the spelled ropes they’d tied around his wrist. “—when I fucking _told them_ to run.”

“Life itself is a grand adventure, my darling,” the bard is still humming that fucking song, the sound neatly concealing—for human ears—the tick and rattle of the thin metal bars he was using to pick at the lock of their cell door. “And if you let your harpy ex-lover go poking around inside my skull, I shall claw out your eyes.”

“I’ll tell Yen you called her that,” Geralt grunts, bracing a foot against the wall. They hadn’t smoothed the stones correctly, and there was a jagged piece of rock just there, if he just arched his back a _little_ higher—

“Oho, threats, is it? And when I’m the doing all the—” there was a tiny click, and Jaskier reached out to push the cell door open, turning back to the witcher with a triumphant expression just as the ropes binding him tore with a decisive snap. “work. Oh, you _show-off_.”

Geralt smirks. “Come on. Let’s go find Roach.” He pushes past the bard, swinging open the cell door with his shoulder.

He smacks dead into the two guards rounding the corner pretty much immediately afterwards.

“Shit,” Geralt says resignedly, and promptly hits the guard closest to him in the stomach. The second guard takes the opportunity to sprint away from him, yelling at the top of his lungs, as the witcher gets his hand around the other’s neck and twists. “Jaskier, _move_.”

“Right, right, coming!” the bard scrambles from the cell, skirting the fresh corpse. “Which way do you think, right or left?”

The tremor beneath their feet alerts Geralt a second before a fresh crop of soldiers rounds the bend, led by the first guard that had fled, blocking off the exit to the left.

“Right,” Geralt decides, and the two of them turn and bolt. They burst through the door at the far end of the hall, Geralt slamming the bolt in place just as there was a crash of impact on the other side, an arrow whizzing through the gap. They come out into the little room at the base of the tower where the dungeon was housed, where a young soldier clearly on some kind of punishment detail is sat frozen at a tiny desk, his quill dripping blots of ink onto the parchment as he stares at them, open-mouthed. The lone arrow quivers in the stone wall next to his head, the witcher’s swords and Jaskier’s lute tucked next to his feet.

“There’s a spot of luck!” Jaskier beams at the lad. “We’ll need that lute back, my good man, and the swords as well, if you please.”

“Uhm.” The boy’s eyes slid away from Jaskier’s winning smile, towards the heavy door where the pounding and shouting was only increasing in volume, to where Geralt is stood just behind Jaskier, the witcher’s lip curled into a snarl. The boy gulps. “I…”

“ _Now_ ,” Geralt growls.

“Yup, here you go, happy to help,” the boy babbles, shooting his chair back to hit the wall, hands held up by his face. A bead of sweat slides down his temple as Jaskier scoops up his lute, passing Geralt his swords with his free hand. 

The witcher slings them onto his back, some of the tension leaving his shoulders. He cocks a brow at the lad, watching his face go white. “My horse?”

“Stables are just before the main gate, two lefts and a right, can’t miss them,” the soldier says weakly.

“Thank you!” Jaskier smiles again. “You’ve been very helpful, lad. Very sorry about this, really.”

“Very sorry about wha—” the boy’s words cut off abruptly as the pommel of Jaskier’s dagger—the one he kept in his lute strap—crashes down on his head, sending him slumped down to the floor, one hand still weakly clutching his quill. 

“You’re getting better at that. Good pressure,” Geralt grunts, checking over the straps one more time before he moved to the door that lead from the tower to the grounds.

“Practice makes perfect, my lovely,” the bard chirps, right on his heels.

They burst out of the small door, running for the stables as quickly as they can without being seen—two lefts flew by, and then the right, and then Geralt was patting down Roach, checking over his mare and securing her tack with quick but gentle hands. It’s as they’re leading her out of the stable gates that the cry goes up from the dungeon tower, and a troupe of guards playing at dice near the gate looked up and lock eyes on the witcher.

“Jaskier,” Geralt says lowly, unsheathing his steel sword with one efficient pull of his arm. “I _mean_ it this time. Run. Now.”

“Geralt—”

“Go!” he roars, shoving at the bard just as the first of the guards reaches them, already moving to block a downward strike. He hears Roach take off beside them at a canter—clever girl—catches a flash of red doublet as Jaskier, for once, did the smart thing and followed after. The fight that follows blurred, the guards falling easily but always ready with a fresh crop of men, and he find himself in a familiar haze of slashing and dodging until there was a sharp cry and suddenly, the air goes sour with the lemon tinge of Jaskier’s fear.

He breaks off from the last of the men swarming him, running to the gate, where Jaskier is held tight by two guards, his arm twisted at an unnatural angle behind his back, face white with pain and a woman, a mage, her lip curled cruelly standing a little ways in front of him, her hands already glowing.

He hits the men holding the bard at a sprint, taking the arm of the guard holding Jaskier clean off, the force of his impact throwing all three men to the ground, but throwing Jaskier clear.

His body feels the spell crashing into him long before his brain caught up, sending him tumbling right after the guards, his fingers gripping the hilt of his sword tight only on instant. His senses flare, the smell of lavender suddenly filling his nose, his limbs weighed down by a strange heaviness. He groans, trying to lift his head to focus, the blurry outline of the mage stacking closer—until there’s a smear of red and gold thread crossing his vision, a quiet wretching _hack,_ blood welling from the slash in her throat.

“Take that, you old bitch,” Jaskier hisses, and Geralt fumbles for his hand, letting the bard haul him back to his feet. They slip out of the gate without further fanfare, following the faint echo of Roach’s hooves beneath the lingering shouts of the guards. 

* * *

“That was close,” Jaskier pants, trying to catch his breath, once Geralt had indicated they could stop running, that they had put enough miles between them and the guard post, He braces his good hand on his bent knees, half his face tilted to keep some of his body weight on Roach. “Are you alright?”

“Your arm is broken,” Geralt grunts , already rustling inside of Roach’s saddlebags for some bandages, his free hand making a crocking gesture at the bard.

“Oh, really? I hadn’t noticed,” Jaskier rolls his eyes but comes obligingly closer. He bites his lip as Geralt gently lifts the limb, but those luminous blue eyes remain sharp on the witcher’s face. “But are alright? I saw the witch hit you and from her prattling before your _very_ dashing rescue, that spell is hardly meant to do anything good.”

Geralt flicks his eyes at the bard’s face and away, concentrating on keeping the singer’s arm still and straight while he prods as gently as he can at the break. “I forgot she hit me,” he admits, and lets a small hmm of amusement rise at Jaskier’s muttered, _unbelievable_. “Will I turn into a frog, do you think?”

“My dear, if anything that would be an improvement,” the bard smirks—then yelps as Geralt shoves him towards a nearby boulder, thrusting the bandages and a thin green bottle of murky liquid into his good arm. The bard sits, his head cocked a bit in consideration, scanning Geralt as the witcher selects some few thin sticks from the forest ground and the bard pulls the cork from the bottle with his teeth, taking a fast sip of the painkiller. “No, I gather she wanted one less troubadour brightening the roads, to be honest. I can’t assume, ‘don’t worry bard—it’s just like going to sleep’ is a sentiment that will lead anywhere…lively.”

Geralt blinks at him, keeping his face still.

“Lively? Get it? It’s funny. Because she was trying to kill me,” the bard beams at him helpfully, from where he was still perched and waiting on the rock. When Geralt didn’t move, he huffs out a breath. “Really, you never appreciate my wit—"

“Show some and I will,” the witcher retorted, the corner of his mouth quirking up. While Jaskier splutters at him, he grasps the bard’s arm with a firm hand and jerks, setting the bone back into place. The bard goes white, tears gathering at the corner of his eyes, and he makes a single sound, high and quiet. The witcher’s chest twists, and he was reaching out before he knew it, tapping the bottle still in Jaskier’s hands at the last second to disguise the move. The bard brings it up with a a shaky hand, tipping another dose into his mouth. His hand comes down, setting the bottle next to his feet, and comes to curl around Geralt’s knee, the grip tight.

“There,” the witcher says, nonsensically, and he picks up the first of the sticks.

Geralt’s set broken bones before, but it’s a different experience when it’s a human, not one of his brothers. He can hear Jaskier’s heart beating quicker, the faint tremor of his skin, hear the pain in every measured breath the bard takes--using that Oxenfurt training, no doubt. He lets Jaskier keep his hand clutched to Geralt’s leg, murmurs at him like he would Roach as he gently, carefully guides the bone where it should be. 

Geralt is calm, patient. His hands don’t shake. Yet it still takes him far, far too long to finally tie off the splint, and he still can’t shake the lingering guilt from his spine. 

They set up camp like they usually do after it’s done, Geralt brushing down Roach while Jaskier searches for firewood, getting the fire lit as the bard tugs their cooking stuff from their bags, before going off to hunt for their supper as Jaskier is setting out their bedrolls and tugging out the blankets. The rabbits they eat are fat and juicy, the only real change in their routine being Jaskier, usually fastidious about his meals, giving up on trying to pinch off neat chunks of his meat one-handed and instead just grasping the whole haunch in his good hand.

“If Oxenfurt could see you now,” Geralt murmurs, and laughs softly as the bard still managed to make an obscene gesture with the hand clutching the last of his rabbit.

They settle down to sleep soon after, without Jaskier insisting upon strumming on that lute of his—“I must keep in practice, dear witcher!”—and Geralt kept his tongue firmly behind his teeth, but the silence as they both laid back where there should have been soft echoes in the air, the last timbering vibrations of Jaskier’s voice, unnerved him. Geralt’s eyes skate over the pallor of his skin, the tightness of his mouth, the way his blue eyes had gone heavy-lidded. Something warm in his stomach flares, sudden. “You can rest,” he adds, after a moment of silence when it was clear Jaskier wasn’t going to speak. “You need it.”

“I suppose I do,” the bard’s voice caught on something halfway between a yawn and a laugh. “Good night then, darling.”

Geralt hums, quietly, closing his own eyes. He let the soft thudding of the bard’s heart, his easy breaths, mask the lingering smell of pain and poppy milk, lull him gently downwards, his own chest rising and falling in the half-beats between heartbeat and exhale, and soon, he knew only blackness.

_Geralt walks through the streets—it is the alleys of Oxenfurt no, the crooked corners of Vizima, no, the bright crossroads of Cintra, no, a thin dirt path overgrown by hedge and vine, shadowed, lonely. He is always walking. He can feel his sword clutched in his fist, the point low, scraping the ground—how Vesimir would have beaten him for that—in the dust kicked up by his dragging steps. There is blood, dripping from his hands, beading slowly down the metal of his blade, leaving a scattered trail of crimson droplets to mark his way. He does not remember a time when his hands weren’t bloody._

_The streets glow, and in their glow, he sees them. Flashes of teeth, undulating fins giving way to claws sparking silver, fur, matted over scars from past victories. He takes a breath as he was trained, to scent the wind, but he can smell nothing but lavender, where there should be blood, lavender, over bone and rot, lavender, over sunbaked, fetid fluid. Lavender, that creeps under his tongue, relaxes his fingers on his sword, droops his eyes._

_This is wrong, he knows. This is wrong…_

_“Geralt?”_

_The voice comes, as it often does, singing sweetly through the air, a balm to his overwhelmed senses. He sees, at the edge of the alley, a figure, outlined in lavender fog, striding toward him. His heads sways, drunken, trying to track the movement, trying to hear him, to smell him…_

_“Geralt,” Jaskier is in front of him now, though he does not know how. His hand is cupping his cheek, his other, sliding down his wrist, coming to rest over where he is keeping his fingers, too loose around his sword. “Where have you been? You must be so tired. Don’t you want to rest, sweet?”_

_“Rest?” is all the witcher can say, dizzy. His eyes dip closed, once, twice. “No. It isn’t time.”_

_“Shhh,” Jaskier shushes him, sweetly. All the witcher can see is Jaskier’s eyes, the way he’s smiling at him, so kindly. All he can smell is lavender. “It’s all right. It’s all right to let go. No one will see. No one will blame you, Geralt. Geralt…_

“Geralt!”

The witcher shot upright with a shout, his chest heaving, one hand already holding his sword, half-unsheathed. He blinks, clearing strange streets and thick fog from his vision, the forest swimming into view. The half-dead campfire, more ember than flame. Jaskier, next to him, white as fresh cream, his heart beating in his chest, wild, beatbeatbeatbeatbeat—

“Jaskier?” the witcher’s voice scrapes against his throat. He breathes in deep, but all he can smell is the forest around them, wet mulch and fur and green, the smoke from the campfire and Jaskier, chamomile and dark tea and sweet wood. No lavender anywhere. “What the fuck?”

“That, my dear witcher, should be entirely my line,” the bard says, and only a witcher would be able to catch it, to hear his quivering heartbeat and to smell the lemon fear of his sweat. “I think the witch’s spell may be more serious than we first thought, after all.”

“Jaskier,” Geralt made himself lower his sword back into his sheath, setting it down with calm control when he felt neither, “What happened?”

“I don’t know!” Jaskier narrows his eyes, indignant. “I was sleeping peaceful as a babe, and then something woke me, and I looked over to see you twitching and moaning, and—” he swallowed. “And you were covered in this weird, purple mist…stuff. It made me dizzy.”

“Lavender…” the witcher murmurs, caught in his own thoughts. He shacks his head, sharpish, before looking back at Jaskier. 

A hazy memory swims up to the front of his mind — a stolen afternoon with Yennefer, talking shop. They’d been talking about curses. Sex curses, the most common, death curses, the most costly, and then, some of the rarer ones, the ones that aren’t used on the regular, too cumbersome and of too limited use for the average mage to bother with. Like sleeping curses.

Sleeping curses…”Shit,” Geralt swears, quietly. “Jaskier, I think I’ve been cursed.”

The bard groans. “Oh, not _again_.”

The bard sits down heavily next to the witcher’s side, dragging his good hand over his face. “Well, do go on, don’t keep in suspense. What horrors does this little spell have in store for us, hmm?”

“Yen told me about it once,” the witcher’s voice is grim, and he tries to cast his mind back, to when Yennefer was ticking off the outcome and the remedy for this type of curse, but, well, as they’d been in bed at the time, he doesn’t remember as much as is actually _helpful._ There’d been a story, too, something about a spindle? He remembers the eventual outcome, though, if it’s not caught in time. “It’s some kind of. Sleeping curse. It waits until you fall asleep. And then it makes sure you don’t wake up.”

A small beat of silence.

“Well, that is just about the most horrifying way you could have possibly phrased that, Geralt,” Jaskier’s voice goes shrill, and Geralt couldn’t help but wincing, just a little. “What am I supposed to do with that, I mean really, you pick now to develop a sense of drama—”

“Jaskier,” Geralt cut him off, doing his best to keep his tone calm—the best way to derail the bard from a tangent, he’d learned, was not to allow him to start one. “We’re going to go find Yennefer. And until we do, you can’t let me go to sleep. Do you understand?”

Jaskier stares at him, mouth a little bit open, and it was only because he was close, but Geralt found himself absently noticing, once again, just how very blue his eyes were.

“That is,” the bard says faintly, after a time, “the _dumbest_ plan I’ve ever heard in my life.”

Geralt sighs. “Jaskier—”

“No, honestly,” the bard interrupts, throwing his hands up in the air in indignation, only to bring them down sharpish when the motion tugged at his wounded arm. “You want to what, just stay awake forever, in the middle of this godsforsaken wilderness, until we stumble onto some hovel of a town where we can hole up while we try and call your witchy ex-paramour to help fix things, and hope that until then you don’t collapse from exhaustion and die in the meantime?”

“Yes.” Geralt raises an eyebrow. “Do you have a better plan?”

Jaskier puffs up. “Geralt. I am a bard of Oxenfurt, a renowned poet and troubadour and a master of the seven liberal arts. I think I can come up with a better plan than just, _stay awake and hope I don’t die.’_ ”

Geralt raises an eyebrow. “Oh, yeah?”

Jaskier crosses his arms. “Just you wait and see.”

* * *

“It’s a perfectly viable plan.”

“You’re a fucking moron.”

“And you’re being impossible,” Jaskier actually, honest to gods, sticks his tongue out at Geralt, and Geralt refuses to give in to his equally childish urge to stick out his own tongue in response. He keeps his face still as stone, refusing to budge.

He has rejected all of the beginning ideas the bard has come up with so far, because, in order, no, he does not know of any “weird, witchery herbs that can cure this little problem,,” no, he does not have any of his weird friends that just happen to live in this forest at the edge of nowhere, constructing a xenovex is more complicated than just “shaping a little box out of wood and doing some witchering to it,” and he is currently trying to talk Jaskier out of the fucking _lunacy_ that is walking into a faery ring on purpose, _like an idiot—“_ no, don’t finish that story, _I don’t want to know_ , Jaskier—", to see if they can help out, he likes his feet and his eyes where they are and with all the working bits firmly attached, thanks very much.

Geralt finally cuts the bard off in the middle of what sounds like an impassioned, and very much untrue, recitation of the particular charms of a certain fae lady. “You have fuck-all, huh?”

The bard deflates immediately. “Well. Give me time?”

Geralt snorts. “Sure, bard. Why don’t you get some rest until then?”

“Oh, very well,” Jaskier grumbles, trying and failing to get back to his bedroll before Geralt shoves at his good elbow to move him in the right direction. They’d gone to sleep originally in early twilight, and had woken up still in the early hours of evening, but now it was deep night, and dark, and Geralt had no doubt the bard could barely see his hand in front of his face, if that.

He grunts in satisfaction when Jaskier finally reaches his bedroll, only to groan when the bard’s head turns back toward him. “Go to _sleep,_ bard.”

“Well, I was just thinking.” Geralt can see Jaskier’s eyes blink in his direction, gaze fastened somewhere above his left ear where the moonlight is shining on his white hair rather than on his actual eyes. “I mean, how do we even know it is a curse, really? I mean, maybe the witch got it wrong.”

“Hmm.”

“I’m just saying,” the bard insists, a small frown crinkling between his brows. “How do you know it’s not okay to go to sleep? You said yourself, these curses normally wait for the poor sods to doze off until it grabs them for, well, the long night, so to speak, You went to sleep just a few hours ago, and you climbed out of it.”

“Hmm,” Geralt blinks, considering. It’s not a bad point, honestly.

“Maybe the mage back there couldn’t finish the curse, before I, well—“ Jaskier makes a slicing gesture across his own throat, and only the gods know why the word adorable suddenly springs to Geralt’s mind, because he sure doesn’t. “Or maybe it’s because you’re a witcher. Either way, it doesn’t seem like it stuck.”

“Hmm.” Geralt tilts his head back, resting it against the trunk of a nearby tree. He is tired—witchers can go a long time without sleep, much longer than a few hours, but between trying to navigate an unfamiliar forest, staying alert so they’re not ambushed by any following guards or ambitious woodsmen, setting Jaskier’s arm, catching dinner and the constant, low-grade anxiety of trying to make sure Jaskier doesn’t, he doesn’t know, eat a poisonous mushroom for a lark and collapse on the spot, or something, he could use some more rest. He grunts, closing his eyes.

“See?” Jaskier’s voice is thick and breaks on a yawn, somehow, knowing and satisfied the second Geralt closes his eyes. “It will be fine, dear witcher. You’ll see.”

_Everything is burning. Will burn. Has already crumbled, the ash of the ashes._

_Geralt is walking once again through a city of flames, the smoke singing his nose and curling around his loose, snarled hair. It is not quite enough to mask the stench of burning meat, nauseatingly sweet on the air and crackling, like trees tipping to the forest floor, one after the other, in his ears. Cintra’s last, darkest night had lit the city from gate to gate with a thousand fires, and they are still burning._

_Geralt is running, past the smoke and the men in dark uniforms that suck the light and the swelter from the alley, burning, cold black. He knows where he’s going, knows, in the thunder of his heart, that he can make it this time, he can—_

_“You’re too late.” The street changes around him in an instant and he can see him, his helmet shut but still, somewhere, his pale eyes burning—Nilgaard’s finest hunter is in front of him, one of his hands curled almost delicately around Ciri’s throat, where he holds her, limp and unmoving. He can see the blood trickling down her neck. The air brings nothing but the hunter’s scent towards him, falsely lavender sweet, Geralt burns. “You should have been faster. You should have been better. What is left for you, now? You should just give up.”_

_Smooth, purple mist is twining around Geralt’s ankles with every word. He blinks, his eyes on pale blonde hair streaked with blood, something twisty low and heavy in his chest, dragging him down._

_“Just give in, Geralt. There’s nothing left for you, now. No reason to go on when you know you’ve failed.”_

_His eyes close, once and then twice. He takes a single, stumbling step forward. The mist is at his chest now, thick and heady and dark, without blood and pain and the evidence of Geralt’s failures, cradled in dark gauntlets._

_“That’s it, witcher. Let go. Let it all go. What a sad, pathetic thing you are. You couldn’t even protect one child. The white wolf of Kaer Morhen—"_

_“Still has his teeth,” Geralt snarls, and then he lunges forward, his hands outstretched—_

“GERAL-Tach,”

Geralt’s hands are on a pale throat, squeezing his body bearing his full weight down, bringing the body beneath his in the dirt. He can feel one of their hands thumping his back, weaker and weaker, his nose full of terror and fire, and he looks down, into blue, blue-blue eyes.

“Jaskier?” Geralt can’t see, his vision is still fuzzy, but his grip loosens. Jaskier’s hand comes up to box him in the ears in the same moment his knee finds perhaps the perfect target, and it’s only the shock that leads to Geralt getting tossed off the bard’s body, landing with a thump some inches away. Jaskier shoots up, gasping and shuddering for breath, in the early light of the morning.

“Jaskier—” Geralt tries, but the bard shakes his head at him, one of his fingers firmly held out to wait, and Geralt sits back, hopeless and guilty, as the bard regains most of his breath.

“NEW PLAN!” Jaskier shrieks, or tries to, the moment he can draw in air for longer than two interrupted seconds. He’s still coughing. “You are going to s-st-stay aw-a-awake—” he pauses to gasp in air. “For as long as it ta-a-akes—” another desperate inhale “to get this fuck-fuck-fucking curse dealt wit-iiith” another last indrawn breath “and we are just going to fucking hope you do-n’t fucking d-d-die!” 

Geralt nods once, from where he’s resting against a tree, trying to get his own heartbeat back to somewhere resembling the typical slow range for a witcher. “Yeah,” he breathes out, watching his own hands. He flexes his fingers, and shudders, trying to cast limp blonde hair and the thump of a thready heartbeat from his mind. “Good plan.”


End file.
